Geddy Lee could never match Keith Emerson: “It’s a joking matter”
Anyone even thinking of covering a Rush song had better have done their homework before taking on anything Geddy Lee did.
The Canadian icons didn’t set out to make the most complicated music in the world, but they felt that if they could figure out how to play in odd time signatures and talk about heady concepts, their audience wouldn’t have too much trouble following suit whenever they picked up their records. And while they had the creative golden ticket in many respects, Lee felt that there were still some prog musicians who had him beat by a mile.
Then again, the fact that Lee could do everything at a Rush show and still manage to sing feels almost superhuman. The band never wanted to cut corners when it came to making the best show that they could, but the fact that they were determined to play everything with only three people is a modern miracle, especially since Lee was in charge of singing, playing bass, playing bass pedals and somehow trading off between bass and keyboards depending on which song they were working on.
And that’s before you get down to the fact that the guy is an absolute masochist when it comes to playing with his fingers. There is forever going to be an age-old debate on whether bass is better played with fingers or with a pick, but even if Lee saw Chris Squire from Yes as one of his personal heroes, the fact that he could play all of those complicated Yes lines without using a plectrum is still one of the greatest human feats in rock and roll.
But it’s not like Lee thought he was doing too much. Every power trio needs to do more than their job description to keep everything held up just right, and if Neil Peart was putting himself through rhythm hell whenever he played the drums, the least that Lee could do was make the low end pop out just a little bit more. When it came to the keyboards, though, he never claimed to be a novice.
The opening sounds of ‘Subdivisions’ are iconic in the Rush world, but when looking at the way that he plays keyboards, it’s still coming from a guitarist’s perspective. He never claimed to learn every single piece of the keyboard the same way he did on the fretboard, and when looking at the other prog giants that have come before him, he felt that Keith Emerson could absolutely wipe the floor with him.
After all, Emerson, Lake and Palmer were already world-class musicians, and since they didn’t have a traditional guitar player, Emerson’s keyboards left him in a daze when he heard them, saying, “I’m still very much in the dabbling stage. Put me beside any real keyboard player and it’s a joking matter. And I don’t really pretend that I can play. I can write solo lines and melodies, and play basic chord patterns, which is really all I need. But I certainly don’t have any illusions about being a Keith Emerson or anything like that.”
Even if Lee managed to hunker down and spend as much time behind the piano as he did on the bass, he probably still wouldn’t have been anywhere near Emerson’s level. He was truly at one with his instrument whenever he performed, and judging by all of the strange avant-garde harmonies that he put into everything, you would swear that he was trying to slay a musical beast whenever he reached the most intense parts of ‘Tarkus’.
But all that did was give Lee a goal to work towards whenever he started working on one of Rush’s records. Anyone else would have been content to keep themselves occupied by playing the same schtick over and over again, but the fact that one of the best bassists in the world found out ways to challenge himself is the kind of inspiration that anyone needs when they feel like they’re creatively spent.
